Television screens display a news broadcast of the moments of a shooting incident involving suspect Cole Tomas Allen at the venue during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, in Washington, D.C., U.S
| Photo Credit:
REUTERS/KEN CEDENO
The suspect arrested in the White
House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting on Saturday was
identified by a law enforcement official as Cole Tomas Allen, a
Los Angeles-area man who appears from social media sites to be a
Caltech graduate working as a part-time teacher and game
developer.
* The official said Allen, approximately 31 years of age, is a resident of Torrance, California, a coastal town that is part of the South Bay area adjacent to Los Angeles abutting Santa Monica Bay.
* The chief of the District of Columbia police department
said investigators believe the suspect was a guest at the
Washington Hilton hotel, where the annual dinner was taking
place, but that no motive had been determined.
* Facebook postings appearing to relate to Cole show that he
was named “Teacher of the Month” in December 2024 by the
Torrance office of C2 Education, a nationwide private
test-preparation and tutoring service for college-bound
students.
* A LinkedIn profile in the suspect’s name describes him as
a “mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree,
independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth.”
* He obtained a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering
from the California Institute of Technology in 2017, and a
master’s degree in computer science from California State
University at Dominguez Hills in 2025, according to the profile.
Caltech said in a statement that a person of that name graduated
in 2017.
* Under job experience, the post shows he has worked for the
past several years as a part-time teacher for C2 Education and
as a self-employed game developer. He previously worked as a
mechanical engineer for a company called IJK Controls in South
Pasadena for a year before that as a Caltech teaching assistant.
* The profile also includes a local newspaper article “on a
robotics competition my team won” at Caltech in 2016.
* Under “Causes,” it lists only: “Science and Technology.”
* The Secret Service said the suspect was armed with a
shotgun and was taken into custody after opening fire at a
Secret Service agent in the Washington Hilton Hotel, outside the
ballroom where the event was attended by President Donald Trump,
his wife Melania, Vice President JD Vance and several cabinet
secretaries.
Published on April 26, 2026
